


and our bodies remained free

by from



Category: Golf RPF, One Direction (Band), Sports RPF
Genre: Anal Fingering, M/M, Phone Sex, RPF, Rare Pairings, Rimming, Touring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-18 19:33:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5940523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/from/pseuds/from
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Toronto, August 2015. Harry is pointlessly competitive about Niall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and our bodies remained free

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to [foureyedniall](https://foureyedniall.tumblr.com) and [brokendrums](http://archiveofourown.org/users/brokendrums) for looking it over

Niall wakes up with the earthy smell of cinnamon up his nose, like he’s been buried deep in its dust. He’s in his hotel room in Toronto, he says to himself, staring at edge of the bed and the floor beyond. He’s sticky all over, his knee the only bit of him that’s comfortable in the heat. There’s none of the familiar ache he gets in the mornings even though his legs and back are sore from the game with Rory yesterday.

 _7: 28_ his phone says. He digs up the number of the civilian he met at the bar last night and sends her a text, something to start off with in case she might like to come down to Chicago for the next show.

He rolls over onto his back, seeing from the corner of his eye Harry lying next to him. It’s not something that should make him feel good at all. He shouldn’t want to lean over and touch Harry’s face, run his hand along the dips of his back, press his nose against Harry’s pillow and smell the heat of him there.

Silently, slowly, he moves to the edge and gets out of bed, pads to the other side to blow out the candle Harry left burning. It might be his or might be Harry’s, but Niall never leaves a candle lit when he’s going to bed. Harry is another story. It’s honestly a fucking wonder they haven’t burned down every place they’ve stayed.

There’s a small gap in the curtains and Niall pulls them closed. They’re high enough that the world is blind to Harry being in his bed, but Harry has been keeping odd hours and sunlight would disturb him when there might be a chance for a reset instead, get him back to waking up in the late mornings again.

Niall glances over his shoulder at the line of Harry’s body, the old protectiveness threatening to turn into even older tenderness, and resolutely walks well away from the bed.

He thought Harry would do better in a hotel they’ve used before, in a city they’ve gone to every year. Harry was sleeping when Niall got back to his suite last night, but he’d woken him up and they’d snacked in the sitting room, talking about nothing. When he went to sleep without showering, too tired to bother with it, Harry was still up writing, promising he’d go back to his own rooms.

Maybe Niall should have known. They talked about nothing because neither of them wanted to be the first to bring up his day with Rory. Most of the time Niall is one-hundred percent sure Harry doesn’t give a shit about it, but there have been times when Harry seemed angry, wounded, as if he expected Niall not to be with any other bloke if Niall wasn’t going to be with him.

Nothing about it had to do with Harry, Niall always tells himself.

It started when Rory took him to play down in Palm Beach after their third tour ended in Miami. No bodyguards, no press, just the two of them on the private course. It was fucking fantastic being outdoors with only the game to think about, with no one making him feel like hunted prey and no band politics to skirt around in conversation. 

On the fifth hole, it started to storm and the wind was kicking the water up into the caddy car. They headed for the small building housing the toilet around the turn before the sixth hole. By the time he and Rory could duck in, they’re both half-soaked.

The toilet, a large room they could put a small tent in, was immaculate, but there was only a washstand and the window sill to drop their wallets and phones onto for drying. With just the one toilet to sit on, he knew they'd both ignore it unless they had to go for a piss.

He went to check the weather online and gave up because his connection kept dropping. So did Rory's. That left them both with nothing to do but stand around, getting a little chilled in the cool building. 

“Might as well get dry,” Rory said, peeling off his snapback and shirt to run them under the hand dryer. 

Rory had stripped with locker room efficiency and Niall stood waiting for the dryer with a shyness he hadn’t felt since the X-Factor house. One of his legends-turned-friends was standing in front of him, half naked, his thick back pearly under the fluorescent lights.

He'd never thought of Rory as someone he'd like to feel under his hands, but he was starting to feel tight all over, thick on the inside with stupid little wishes.

He wanted to know if Rory would feel solid under his hands, if Rory was a good fuck, if their bodies could slot perfectly together. He wanted a quick hookup in their little refuge just to give him a clue, for Rory to look at him and offer without being prompted to.

Rory moved to the wall to let Niall have a go at the dryer and he stepped up with his white shirt in his hands, wondering if Rory could see he was a little flushed.

The jet of warm air felt really good on his skin, but his head was getting turned about by the soup of sunblock and detergent smells rising up above the noise of the machine and the rain pelting down.

“You’ve got a pro athlete’s body,” he heard Rory say when the dryer cut off for the third time. 

Niall chuckled. “’Think so?” he replied lightly, something hot skittering up his spine. “That’s high praise coming from someone like you.” 

“Just an observation,” Rory said, but Niall knew it wasn’t. Rory could say what he liked, but he’d felt a similar heat many times before. When no one else was around to see, Harry would be looking and Niall would start to burn up the same way. 

He turned around, hip jutted so his belly bulged. “But have you seen this?”

“Looks like a strong start there,” Rory said, his eyes still bright with want. 

“The secret’s three pints a night and straight to bed.” Niall stepped closer. “Want a feel?”

Rory threw his still-damp snapback at Niall, who let it fall to the concrete floor so he could reach up and give Rory a kiss when it was clear to both of them that Rory wasn’t going anywhere.

The kiss was more like a series of kisses because Rory opened up and kissed back, his hands low on Niall’s waist, and Niall thought maybe it was his one chance and he was going for all he could get. 

He touched Rory’s chest, the hair much thicker than his own, and slid his hand down over Rory’s stomach, his fingertips charting down soft skin to a trail that disappeared under Rory’s shorts. 

Rory unbuckled his own belt and Niall pulled off the free end so he could go straight for the buttons, slip his hand under the fabric. 

For an eerie moment, Niall wondered if it was Rory’s first time with a bloke, but he grinded closer and palmed Niall over his shorts when Niall touched him, his cock hot in Niall’s hand, like he already knew what he wanted and where he should best be for it.

“Might as well pass the time,” Rory said, grinning into another kiss, slow and wet.

When Rory dipped his head and nosed along his neck, Niall remembered to ask, “Just mates, yeah?” 

“Not looking for anything else,” Rory replied.

Niall believed him completely and felt his breathing go shallow with every press of Rory’s nose, Rory’s rough hair brushing his collarbone. There was a strange excitement to Rory’s sureness, like Niall didn’t have to worry about going full throttle because he could feel safe about the end. 

They tugged each other off, with slow stops and starts at first, and then steady and fast, their shorts down around their ankles, the sides of their golf shoes touching. 

It felt a bit like they’re starring in some weird _Caddyshack_ porn and maybe a Bill Murray lookalike was somewhere out there on the course cursing about all the water drowning his dynamite. He rode the laughter inside of him, not wanting to come too quick for Rory even though the backs of his ears had started to burn with the need.

Rory went for a handful of his arse, his fingers slipping into the cleft, and Niall rocked up closer, hoping for the rarer of things he’s missed since he stopped fucking his best friend. Rory rubbed at his hole gently, the rain pouring on outside, and Niall felt relief coursing through him strangely just before he came, his face tucked up into Rory’s neck.

They’re buckling up their belts later when his curiosity got the better of him. “Do you do this kind of thing on the Tour then?” _Is that why you decided you couldn’t commit to Caroline,_ he stopped himself from asking. 

“Yeah, during rain delay, Justin and I find each other and go to the toilets together.” 

“No, I mean.” Niall stopped to think of a way to say it differently, but he couldn’t. Not without possibly giving him and Harry away. “You know what I mean.” 

“It’s pro golf, mate. Getting off with guys is a luxury,” Rory laughed. 

Niall was listening and couldn’t hear any bitterness. Maybe the absence of it felt strange to him because there wasn’t a single person in the band who wasn’t bitter about something by then and he’d got used to watching out for it.

“What about you?” Rory asked, stepping away so Niall could use the sink. “Since we’re trading stories.”

“The only one I play golf with is Harry and we don’t do this.” _Not anymore,_ he didn’t add. “It’s too much of a risk, no? With the kind of markets we have. It’s not like how it is with the girls. You have to know who you can trust,” he said, scrubbing clean the wells between his fingers and what fingernails he had with the foamy soap. “But then you’re on the road with them almost the whole year and you end up complicating everything.”

Rory put his snapback under the hand dryer again and that was the end of it. Or more like the start of it. A phone call now and again. Meeting up to play a round. A fun harmless fuck after if they can fit it in. 

Like the night before, after their round at the National and the stop at the bar, when he went up to Rory’s hotel for a beer and part of the Farsø tournament replay. Rory was going on and on about Horsey and longevity. Niall let him even though he’d been hoping for a mindless fuck. The previous weekend, Rory had lost his number one ranking to Jordan Spieth and Niall wanted to be a good mate. They got each other off quick and a little rough on the couch during a lull, and he left soon after for a hot shower and his own hotel bed.

He wished he hadn’t, but he wasn’t surprised when he found Harry in it. 

They weren’t even a day into their Toronto stay and the sitting room in his suite was already drenched in the smell of cinnamon because Harry can’t see a candle without lighting it. He kept his suitcases in his own suite, but his stuff has been migrating into Niall’s by the hour. 

Now Harry’s stuff is strewn all over the sofa, the coffee table, even the bloody shelves where the coffee machine and glassware are. Sometimes Niall thinks it would be better if they still had rooms with connecting doors so he could make some rules that stick, toss Harry’s things through the doorway back to his room. 

Niall finishes his glass of juice and heads back into the bedroom to get to the bathroom. Harry hasn’t stirred. Niall carefully slides the door shut behind him. 

Everything around him is either a shade of white or made of glass. The year before, he already thought his rooms were enormous, just like the stadiums they played, but they’re even bigger now, as if all everyone needed was more space. Indoors is still indoors, Niall thinks, no matter how high the walls go and how spread apart they are. 

He starts a bath, tossing both bottles of foam into the freestanding tub, and goes for a piss in the adjoining toilet, the smell of lemons and oranges spreading with the steam.

The water is sweetly hot. He sinks into it with a slow sigh, his skin pinpricking. The bath foam is shapeless and white, but the smell reminds him of the street market in Hackney he used to go to with the boys when they first got started because everything was cheap. The citrus fruits would be piled up in baskets and Harry would gather as many as he could fit in his arms as if he was in danger of dying from scurvy. 

Niall turns on the telly – one of those crazy ones that look like part of the mirror until they come on – and mutes it before looking for a sports channel. 

He rubs the soap over his skin with a washcloth, his mind half on the match reports and half on the shower he’s going to take after because he’s still not feeling clean. 

When the water is closer to warm than hot, he gets out of the tub and cracks the door open a bit, drinking down one of the bottles of mineral water the hotel stocked all corners of the suite with.

The bedroom is dark and his view fuzzy with steam, but he can see Harry still hasn’t moved.

He goes to the damp mirror and stares at his face, at the thin stubble he always gets rid of, no matter how often shaving against the grain leaves him with nicks and cuts. He’ll have to do it again today. 

His phone buzzes when he’s padding to the shower. He doubles back to the counter to get it.

Niall always answers when it’s Rory. What they have is like those Diagon Alley gaslights in Orlando. He knows they weren’t actually magical, but for the whole time he was at the park, they made magic feel real anyway.

“Mornin’. Saw Horsey did well,” he says first off.

"Yep. His mind for that title, I’m sure. Did you sleep well?"

“Yeah,” Niall smiles, knowing Rory will hear it. “A bit sore, though, when I woke up. Just had a soak in the tub.”

"You towelled off yet?"

Niall laughs. “Did you ask—Oh. Erm.” He knows what Rory is calling for. He glances at the door. “No, not yet.” It’s not slid completely closed, but Harry is out like a light or he’d have come in to complain about the steam.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I should, probably. Getting a bit chilly standing here."

"Are your nipples hard?" Rory asks, easy but still single-minded, like how he gets when he’s checking his scorecard tallies.

"Ah, yeah. But that's more cos my hair is wet,” he says, his hand going up to push it back a bit even though Rory can’t see. It’s just him wet and damp in a posh bathroom, the crazy TV in the mirror muted, the smell of cinnamon starting to cut through the citrus from the bath like a forest growing back. “It's still dripping, down my back, my chest."

Rory grunts. "Wish I was there to lick it off your chest, Niall. I wanna do that. Lick the water off so I can suck rough on your skin."

Niall puts the phone down on the marble countertop, sets it on speaker, his fingers slipping on the screen. "Where on my skin?" he asks, looking up at himself in the mirror, at his muscled shoulders, the vee of his torso, the cuts by his hips. The things about him people like the most. 

Except Harry, who told Niall his knee scar, with the stretched skin and puckered flesh, was Harry’s favourite. _Cos I watched it grow,_ Harry said. _I was there when it happened._ Niall didn’t know what to say so he just thanked him because if there’s anything that Harry accepts easily, it’s politeness. They were still fucking then. Was probably in the middle of fucking when Harry said it, his eyes large and bright.

Niall turns up the volume on his phone, embarrassed. It’s Rory he’s with right this minute. It’s Rory’s bright eyes he should be thinking about. "And I wanna wet my hand on your back and use it on your dick," Rory is saying.

“’That what you want?” Niall asks, thinking of Rory sitting up on his bed, half his fit body still under the sheets. Niall has seen him sat like that before, one knee bent, his thigh muscles flexing from the pleasure as he played with his thick cock, the skin so taut and smooth when it’s hard. “Do you want me to do the same to you?”

"Mm."

"We'd do it to each other, yeah?” Niall says, stroking himself with a light grip. “I'd take your dick in my hand too. It's a bit wrinkled from the bath, but it knows your dick. It knows what you like, yeah? And you like how I can hold you in my palm, how smooth my fingers are where they're all callused, just some spit and the grip is silky up and down your gorgeous dick. I love it when you thrust into it. When you pump up and your arse, all that muscle, gets tight, hard."

Rory laughs like he’s already stroking himself too. “God, you’re a filthy boy, Horan, but no. Not today,” he says, decisive. Niall’s cock throbs harder just from hearing his tone and he firms his grip a little to stay on the level. “Get some lotion. Rub it on your dick. Just your left hand. I want your right hand free.” 

Niall does as he’s told, popping open the bottle of hotel lotion and spreading the grease all over his cock with his left hand, getting it well hard. “Fuck.” He’s breathing heavy with each slow pump. “Okay. I’ve—”

“I can hear you,” Rory says, easing him. “It’s good, isn’t it? I’m doing the same over here.” 

“’S good. Really good.” He’s playing with his nipple too, rubbing it softly, and watching his face flush, his cheeks painted a dark pink in the mirror. 

“Are you scratching yourself with your other hand? Getting your skin all red?”

“Yeah,” Niall says. It’s close enough and he already couldn’t be any harder. “What do you—”

"Suck your fingers. Get them wet," Rory tells him. "Really wet. I want them slick, Niall."

Niall tips his head down to spit and suck. It’s almost like he’s doing it to his cock, his mouth near as tight as the grip of his other hand. He’s seen girls suck their own tits before, but he’s never met a guy who could suck his own cock. Sweat is beading on his temples again, his hips starting to hitch on their own.

“I’ve done them. They’re—they’re all wet.” 

“Good. Now rub your hole, get it wet and open. Rub it the way I’d do it.”

It was almost like this when Rory last touched his arse, the two of them staring at the master bathroom mirror in Rory’s rental in Augusta last April. Rory's shoulder tucked up behind his, Rory’s fingers playing with his hole, already wet with lube, and Niall tugging himself off, lazily, taking his time with his cock head, the slit all leaky, and then fast when Rory wanted him to. 

“Your finger and your thumb, up and down my arse. Like the L like when you’re measuring,” Niall says. Rory laughs at that, cursing him. “And then you curl it in. You make a knuckle and you curl it in.”

“Yeah. That’s it. That’s it,” Rory breathes out. “Tell me. Tell me how it feels.”

"My thumb’s just on my skin, rubbing down like, thick between my cheeks. My finger’s bent. I’m slipping it in, slipping the knuckle in." Niall uses his shoulder to muffle his whine in case it comes out a scream. “God I’m tight. It burns a bit. But it’s good. Really fucking good,” he tells Rory. “And I’m hot. Like it’s hot around my finger. I’m gonna pull it out so I can push it in more. I just want it deeper.”

“Yeah. God yeah.”

He spits on his fingers again and pushes one back into his hole, slowly, the ache making his cheeks flame up. “It’s back in. Wish it were your dick but. ’S good. I want—I want another one.” He pulls out to try for two this time and tenses, quivering, feeling a hand over his and then around his wrist. There’s a wet tongue lapping at his fingertips, and then at his hole, like it’s barely reaching, and Niall wants to push back, move his fingers away, but the hand – Harry’s hand – won’t let him. “Oh Christ.” 

“Shit. I love it when your voice gets low like that,” Rory groans, the ratcheting sounds of him coming loud in the bathroom, where they’re not alone anymore. 

“Mate,” Niall whispers, feeling a surge of shame as he pulls his shaking hand out of Harry’s grip, wanting to get away. His legs won’t move, though, and he’s still stroking his cock, still in it even though he shouldn’t be. 

Harry’s grip goes down to his thigh, Harry’s tongue doing little swirls, the way Harry likes to prep him for cock. 

“Mate,” Niall tries again, louder. “I’m off.”

“What?” Rory sounds dazed.

"Speak soon, yeah?" He’s lost this one. The spread of wet around his hole is not about them anymore and it’s all he can think about. 

"You're off?"

Niall tries to chuckle at Rory’s confusion but it sounds watery and crazed, like his heart is thundering against the damp walls, smudging them brown. "Don't ask me to repeat myself right now. You're fucking fantastic. Good luck next weekend," Niall tells him and ends the call, his hand over the phone and then pushing it away so he can hold on to the edge of the marble with his free hand.

He presses back, gripping his slicked up cock tighter, and lets Harry in, lets himself be greedy with Harry, wants Harry's breathing moist against him, the stubble pressed up against his skin, little pricking scratches of rough hair on his seat to take him over the edge.

Niall pumps his cock faster, Harry fucking him with his tongue, like they’ve got each other so right. With a whine, he nuts into the eggshell sink, Harry's tongue like it's curled half inside him, and him clenching and unclenching helplessly.

"Fuck, Niall,” Harry says, pulling back, his voice reedy. “Fuck, you are so hot."

Harry's fingers run slickly over his hole, down between his legs, pressing against his balls, and up to his cock. "Harry, I've already—" He's really sensitive after he comes, but maybe Harry's forgotten. "I've just—"

"Shh. I know. I know." Harry's hand runs along his cock, and Niall tenses at the touch but it's hardly anything because, of course, how could he forget, all Harry wants is the feel of Niall's come on his fingers, to know he'll have the scum of it later on the underside of his rings. Christ. Niall looks away and focuses on the muted telly to get away from the screaming in his chest.

There's a soft groan against the back of his thigh, and Harry is coming, teeth digging into his skin, come pulsing warm down his left heel.

Niall wants to reach back and touch his face, stroke his hair, but he knows he shouldn't. He can't. He settles for putting his hand over Harry's, running over his fingers until they drop away from the top of his own thigh.

He takes a deep breath and turns on the tap, letting the water swirl in the sink. He gives himself the time to wipe his cock and groin down with a face towel and rinses the towel afterward. 

There's no room to lift his foot and wipe that down too without turning around, so he does.

Harry is smiling, smug as can be for someone who is arse naked next to a soggy bath mat.

"Get what's on the floor, will ya," Niall tells him, passing him one of the hand towels.

Harry runs the bathtub tap to get it wet and does as he's told, but the smug smile doesn't waver.

Niall doesn't want to be stodgy. What they did felt good and there's a part of him that missed it, that almost ran straight back for it when Zayn left. He likes being close to Harry like that. He likes it too much. "What was that?"

"I think it's pretty obvious what that was," Harry says, eyebrow cocked.

Niall balls his hand towel and throws it into the shower cubicle. He thinks about getting in himself, but he doesn't want to spiral into their old routine: a slow lazy fuck, a kip, a fast fuck, a clean. "Not supposed to be doing this, H."

"Because it's complicated."

"Yeah."

"That wasn't so complicated, was it?"

"Jeeesus." Niall leaves him in the bathroom and heads for the bedroom on shaky legs to have a drink of water from the carafe on the nightstand. 

Harry shows up not a minute later, still naked, and sits down where he slept last night, his elbow knocking against Niall's back. "If I were world number one, would we still be fuck buddies too, Niall?"

“Rory’s not world number one at the moment," he replies, shutting his eyes tight, trying to tuck things back into place. "Don’t you remember, Spieth took it from him on Sunday?”

“Oh. Did Rory not finish high enough?” Harry yawns. “All right, world number two then.”

Niall turns to look at him, his mad best friend. "And what would you be world number two at?"

Harry makes a face with waggling eyebrows and eyes pointing at things in rapid succession. He could be saying: pillow fluffing. Or: lamp smuggling. Or: wank bombing you while you're having phone sex with someone else. None of which is actually quantifiable.

"You're an idiot," Niall says, getting up. "If you can't do it with points, you can't have rankings."

“Then let’s do points," Harry says, grabbing his phone from the nightstand. "What did I score just now?”

Niall shakes his head. “No." He needs a shower, he decides. He needs a shower and for Harry to step well back over the line. "I’m going to find something to eat and then we have a plane to catch."

"Okay. Let’s have a shower first. Five points for conditioning." Harry says, prodding his shoulder as he walks back into the bathroom. "The hotel’s Etro one smells nice. Have you tried it?"

"Go have a shower in your own room," Niall says, pushing Harry out toward the sitting room, where with luck he'll gather up the new age hipster tat he's been leaving around over the past couple of days so Niall doesn't have to shove it all into his own suitcases before checkout.

"Fine." Harry picks up his diary and pouch of oils. "That’s minus two points for you," he says.

"Meet you downstairs in twenty minutes," Niall tells him, loading up his partly crossed arms with a couple of books, a jumper, and the other candle from the coffee table.

Harry makes to protest, but Niall shuts him up with a slow, sloppy kiss, their tongues trading touches for a bit, warmth for warmth. He coaxes him along to the door with gentle rubs across his lower back because the tried-and-true method of a cushion to the side of Harry's face feels a little cruel.

The heavy door closes on Harry's surprised yelp.

Niall stares at the fire route plan in its frame hanging on the door, breathing slowly in and out. When he woke up, it wasn't so that he and Harry would be fucking again.

A quick clear-up of the bathroom and Niall is in the shower, lathering up as fast as he can and soaking all the stained towels with leftover soap. He's still hungry and despite all the resistance, he knows Harry's habits and Harry is always perfectly on time.

They've got another city to go to, Harry will tell him, as if Niall needed reminding.

~

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I'm [fromward](https://fromward.tumblr.com/) on tumblr if you'd like to say hi or talk fic over there.


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